What's New in Rental Property Tracker Plus

Version 1.9.5.1 has the following changes:

* A problem with adding partial payments has been fixed.

* Other minor improvements.

This update is recommended for all users.

Version 1.9.5 has the following changes:

* New Add Unit and Add Building features. You can now create buildings in Unit Tracker and add one or more units to them. After choosing a building you will be asked if you want to add one or more units. Multiple units will be numbered sequentially. When you create a building you will be asked to specify a unit type (ie, apt., room, suite, etc.)

* Update Balances and Mark Late Rents have been removed and a Rent Roll report has been added to Tenant Tracker. The Rent Roll lists all Tenants, the amount they owe and if they are Late, Due or Paid. Balances Due are now only updated when Create Receipt is clicked in Rental Income Tracker so this amount is now always correct.

* When adding an Owner or Manager to a Rental Unit Tracker record you will be asked if this person is the same for all units. If so they are then automatically added to all subsequent records.

* Unit Tracker Reports can now be run on one building or unit.

* Expenses can now be assigned to ALL units and buildings for tax reporting.

* You can now Generate a Lease for a tentant who has not moved in yet.

* Unit reports can now be generated for a single Unit or Building

* Printing Improvements

* Better compatibility with Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.5

This update is recommended for all users.

Version 1.9.4.1 has the following changes:

* The Font and Header can now be edited again in the Invoice window.

* Problem with Monthly Calendar not updating properly fixed.

This update is recommended for all users.

Version 1.9.4 had the following changes:

* Mark late Tenants now handles tenants with no payment history properly.

* In the Owner Details there is now a Management Fee field where you can store a particular manager's fee or commission. This number will then get automatically transferred to the Property Management Invoice screen when you select that owner.

* If you have the International Version option enabled in the Prefs window, a new Tax Report appears in the PM Invoice window of Expense Reports. The user can enter a GST or VAT Rate and generate a Report on tax due in Europe, New Zealand or Australia. This feature was implemented several years ago and the forms my now be out of date. Email us if you have any comments about this "new" feature.

* When you click the Add Mortgage Payment to Expense Tracker, if any info besides Payment is missing, a payment record is created without complaining about the missing info.

* Improvements in most reports, especially the Tax Form Report.

* Numbers in most reports are now aligned for easier reading

* In Schedule Tracker when you select a repeating option you are now prompted for an End Repeat date instead of a random date being chosen.

* Improvements with the Color Preferences and updating of the colors in windows of each component.

* Default Colors are back to Light Blue buttons. Of course they can be changed to the default button style for your operating system by deselecting Button Colors in the Colors section of the Prefs screen, or changed to any other color. Macintosh users may like the not rounded no color look which produces a silver rectangular button.

* Printing routines have been updated almost everywhere.

* Attempted to fix hiding windows problems.

* Improved program stability by not allowing blank or incomplete records to exist in most components.

* Improved Help in most components.

* When re-launching program only main component windows are now re-opened (unless New Windows are not enabled in Prefs, then none are reopened).

* Improved Sample Data importing, especially for non-US currency or time formats.

* File write error when quitting fixed.

* Keyboard Shortcuts improved in all components.

* Many minor modifications and improvements.

This update is recommended for all users.

Registered users who have not upgraded their registration numbers to v1.9.x need to click here to pay the upgrade fee

Version 1.9.3.1 had the following changes:

* A bug was fixed in the Rental History Report.

Anyone who wants the improved reports will probably want to upgrade to the new version.

Version 1.9.2 had the following changes:

* A new windows installer is now used, rather than the zip file installation used by the previous version.

* A few minor improvements.

Anyone who upgraded to v1.9.1 can probably skip this version.
Anyone using Mac OS10.4 should upgrade to this new version.
Anyone using Vista should upgrade to this new version.
Windows XP users who want the improved reports, etc. will probably want to upgrade to the new version.

Version 1.9.1 had the following changes:

* More stable application.

* Rounded buttons is now the default.

* Now the Rental Income Tracker records can be sorted by Batch #.

* Double-clicking an event in the Monthly calendar with the Ctrl or Apple key held down opens the Schedule Tracker record.

* Several other minor improvements.

Anyone who upgraded to v1.9.0 can probably skip this version.
Anyone using Mac OS10.4 should upgrade to this new version.
Anyone using Vista should upgrade to this new version.
Windows XP users who want the improved reports, etc. will probably want to upgrade to the new version.

Version 1.9.0 had the following changes:

* Improved Rental Income Tracker Report

* The Property Management Invoice now has header like other invoices.

* Default colors are now subdued in all components. Full color control is still available in the Preferences window.

* Windows now open in a new window by default

* All Reports are now presented as tables.

* Improved Rental Income Tracker Report

* All reports have date range selectors

* Improved report and invoice printing

* Backups are now automatic by default and do not copy over older bak files.

* Better compatibility with both Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.4.x

* Many other minor improvements.

Anyone using Mac OS10.4 should upgrade to this new version.
Most people using Vista should upgrade to this new version.
Windows XP users who want the improved reports, etc. will probably want to upgrade to the new version.

If you are happy with the version you have, and do not feel inclined to upgrade at this time, you should wait, at least until the next version, to upgrade.

Version 1.8.7.1 has the following changes:

* Two important bugs were fixed in this version. If you updated to 1.8.7 then you should update to this version too.

Version 1.8.7 had the following changes:

* There are now Add to PM Invoice buttons in both Rental Expense Tracker and Other Income Tracker. These will be used to separate income and expenses that you want on the Property Management Invoice.

* A new button has been added to Contact Tracker's Prepare Envelope window for converting the name and address to label format..

* In Other Income Tracker, you can now automatically create separate records for deposits, as opposed to regular rent payments, when using the Auto Import feature.

* A few problems with the Tax Form report and Property Management Invoice in Rental Expense Tracker have been fixed.

* A few other minor improvements.

Version 1.8.6.2 had the following changes:

* You can now choose a Fortnightly (every 14 days) rental period.

* You will now be asked if you want to update the balances when you click Mark Late Tenants.

* Property Management Fees and Service Fees may now include a fraction of a percent (ie 2.5% = .025) in Expense Tracker's Property Management Invoice report.

* Property Management Fees may be charged for All Charges (except deposits) or Only Rent.

* There is now a Allow Duplicate Check #s option in Expense Tracker's Accounts dialog.

* When creating the first record for a tenant in Rental Income Tracker, the actual Late Date is now entered.

* Auto Import Income in Other Income Tracker no longer imports any Subsidy payments, only payments made by the Tenant.

* Problem with income totals in Expense Tracker's reports fixed.

* A few other minor changes, especially for Mac OS 10 users.

Version 1.8.6.1 had the following changes:

* A new Automatically Create Payment option has been added to the Payments section of Tenant Tracker.

* A new ACP (Auto Create Payments) button has been added to Rental Income Tracker. This button checks to see if any Tenant records have the new Automatically Create Payment option set and adds a new record to Rental Income Tracker (if one does not already exist) for the current rental period for those tenants. This feature is useful if you automatically deduct the Tenant's rent from their checking account.

* When adding a Management Fee to the Property Management Invoice the Total Due is now correct.

* The preference for Use these colors in all windows now works correctly.

* A few other very minor changes

Version 1.8.6 had the following changes:

Balance Due field in Tenant Tracker is no longer updated when you create a Report, Mark Late Tenants or create a Late Notice,

Mac users can now import Vcards from their Address Book into Contact Tracker.

A few problems have been fixed in the Tax Form Report in Rental Expense Tracker.

The Payment History Report now includes any future payments too.

The Area Code list has been updated in Contact Tracker.

Several other minor improvements.

Version 1.8.5.2 had the following changes:

Problem with First Payment in Income Tracker fixed.

A few other minor improvements

Version 1.8.5.1 had the following changes:

More Improvements in creating Weekly Income Tracker records.

A few other minor improvements

Version 1.8.5 had the following changes:

Notes can now be added to Receipts in Rental Income Tracker.

Improvements in creating Weekly Income Tracker records.

More improvements in calculating balances due in Tenant Tracker.

Expense Tracker's income reporting has been improved.

Any balance due from a partially paid deposit is now added to the Payment History Report.

Credits are now handled properly in Rental Income Tracker.

Several other minor improvements

Version 1.8.4 had the following changes:

You can now create multiple payments for the same amount on the same day
for an individual rental income tracker record.

Improvements in calculating balances due.

When the rent is paid in full by a subsidy, the amount is now added to Tenant Tracker.

There is now more distinction between a Receipt and a Statement.

Integration with RentHistory.com removed (apparently this website no longer exists).

A few other minor improvements

Version 1.8.3 had the following changes:

Setup Wizard removed due to various problems

Minor problem with Expense Tracker's Tax Form report fixed.

Before generating a Tenant Report you are now asked if balances due should be updated.

A few other minor improvements

Version 1.8.2 had a few new features including:

Subsidy payments are now included in Income Tracker as partial payments.

The date of the subsidy payment can be changed when the payment is actually received.

Subsidy payments are now included as normal income in reports.

Subsidy payments can be included on rental receipts or just listed as partial payments.

There is no longer a limit to the number of partial payments for a record.

If the rent has been paid in advance a payment of $0 is accepted.

Better credit and balance due calculations.

Many minor improvements

Version 1.8.1 had a few new features including:

In the Tax Form report in Expense Tracker, if no unit is specified in the Post Unspecified Expenses to Unit field, an undesignated expense section is added to the report.

You can now create a Statement in Rental Income Tracker without having to also click Create Receipt. This makes creating income records in advance possible.

Income Tracker records can now be automatically added to Other Income Tracker.

Other Income Tracker records are now included in the Checkbook Register as deposits.

Tenants can be automatically added to Contact Tracker.

A few minor improvements

Version 1.8.0 had several new features including:

International version (including the spelling of Expenses) now an option in Preferences.

New subdued colors option makes all windows a light lavender color with gray buttons.

Accept Section 8 or other government subsidies for partial rent payments.

Add multiple tenants to any unit

Province and Country fields have been added to Contact Tracker.

Create form letters and send them to any or all Contacts with the new Mailing List feature.

Unit photos are no longer limited to a specific size. They now get resized by Unit Tracker.

A few minor improvements

Version 1.7.7 had a few new features including:

Receipts can be generated and printed multiple times without creating duplicate entries in Tenant Tracker's payments field.

New Time Chooser interface.

A few minor improvements

Version 1.7.6 had a few new features including:

Receipts, Statements, Notices and Reports can be translated into any language.

A few minor improvements

Version 1.7.5 had a few new features including:

Monthly, Weekly, Daily Views of records in Schedule Tracker

Automatic backup of all your records when you quit the program.

Many minor improvements

Version 1.7.4 had a few new minor features and bug fixes including:

Statements and Receipts in Rental Income Tracker can now be printed without the new letter head elements

Other Income Tracker is now backed up and restored properly

Many minor improvements

Version 1.7.3.1 had a few minor bug fixes including:

Statements and Receipts in Rental Income Tracker fixed

Batch field in Rental Income Tracker now accepts duplicate numbers

Version 1.7.3 had a few new features including:

Print Statements and Receipts with logos and other letter head elements

New Monthly, Weekly and Daily views of the Schedule Tracker records

A Batch field has been added to Rental Income Tracker so you can print a list of which rents were collected and deposited in a particular "batch".

The Rental Income Report has a new Daily Totals option

A new Other Income Tracker has been added so you can keep track of any miscellaneous income from vending machines, etc.

Many minor improvements

Version 1.7.2 had a few new features including:

New option in Expense Report allows you to choose whether to Include Income Info in the reports.

You can now choose a Unit in Income Tracker by clicking Unit field instead of choosing a Tenant.

Income Report Save As bug fixed

Many minor improvements

Version 1.7.1 had a few new features including:

Property Management Invoice allows managers to print out an invoice or statement that shows all rent collected and expenses dispersed for each unit. Add a Management Fee (either a percent of rent collected or a flat fee) and a Service Fee (either a percent of expenses paid or a flat fee). Totals show how much is due from or owed to the Landlord or Owner.

New International version creates VAT, GST or other Tax Reports.

Many minor improvements

New name! Rental Tracker Plus is now Rental Property Tracker Plus!

More precise tracking of deposits including new fields in Tenant Tracker for the date paid, check number, partial deposit payment amount and date, and date and amount returned.

New format for Payment field in Tenant Tracker and Payment History Report. Improved addition, deletion and editing of lines in Payment field.

Expense Tracker reports now list income and profit (or loss) from specified units and this information is taken from Tenant Tracker rather than Income Tracker. This means that you can safely delete old Rental Income Tracker records because all payments will remain in Tenant Tracker.

The new Daily Briefing button on the Welcome window opens a report window that displays your Schedule for the day and your To Do List. In registered versions of the software, this report opens automatically whenever you open Rental Property Tracker Plus.

Balances Due (and credits) are now calculated with greater accuracy.

Photos of your buildings can now be displayed in Unit Tracker.

Expense Tracker has a new Tax Paid field where you can keep track of the amount of tax paid.

Expense Tracker now has a Tax Deductible button which can be used to separate non-deductible expenses.

Unit Tracker report has new option that lists only Vacant units.

The Universal Calculator can now add a list of times or compute the difference between two times.

A wide variety of patterns are supplied with the program which can be used to cover the desktop and other programs running on your computer for a "full screen" look and feel.

Improved Help explains how to use the program better.

Many minor improvements

Version 1.6.1 had several new features and improvements including:

• A Security Deposit Accounting report (which includes the date collected, date returned, and total on account) is now added to the end of the Tenant Report.

• Multiple Lease names - now you can add as many names to the lease, notices and receipts as you need to in Tenant Tracker.

• Print Check feature - store multiple layouts and print checks from Expense Tracker.

• Checkbook Register - add deposits and keep track of your balances in multiple accounts from Expense Tracker.

• Date range chooser allows easy entry of preset date ranges for either the Expense Report or the Tax Form Report in Expense Tracker.

• You can now choose whether to include custom Expense types in the Tax Form Report in Expense Tracker.

• The Find Event button in Schedule Tracker now opens a dialog where you can pick an event from a list.

• Marking Late Tenants in Tenant Tracker has been slightly improved. You can now manually unmark tenants and use a new Next button to go to the next late tenant.

• Rental Tracker now handles overpayments and credits much better. Also improvements have been made to the addition and deletion of Payments from Tenant Tracker.

• When a tenant moves out, you can now Prorate the last months rent in Income Tracker. Also Rental Income records are no longer generated for tenants that have moved out.

• A new option allows you to generate Tenant Tracker reports for Current Tenants, Past Tenants or All Tenants.

Version 1.6.0 had a few new features including:

• Waiting List - now you can create new tenants and mark them as Waiting. Then generate a Waiting List Report to view all the Tenant records that are marked as Waiting.

• Expandable Payments field in Tenant Tracker

• Lease length field in Tenant Tracker has been replaced by Deposit Returned field so an accurate report of Security Deposits on account can be added to the Tenant Report.

• In Income Tracker reports you can now choose whether to include Deposits or not. Also the Sort by Due Date button has been changed to read Start Date to avoid confusion.

• Deposits no longer added to Rent income totals in Expense Tracker's Tax Form Report.

• In order to make upgrading to new versions of this software as easy as possible, two new buttons have been added to the Welcome window. You can now Backup Records and Restore Records with a single operation. Saving all the records to one file will also make creating weekly archives very easy.

• When importing records, if a duplicate record is found, Tenant and Unit records are now automatically updated, Expense and Income records are skipped and you will be asked if you want to update Contact and Schedule records or not.

• Several minor problems have been fixed including the Lease Generator printing problem.

Version 1.5.3 had a few minor improvements and bug fixes.

Version 1.5.2 had a few minor improvements including:

• Expandable Report windows.

• Arial font now used for all fields and buttons. This should result in increased legibility on most computers.

• Minor problems fixed

Version 1.5.1 has many new features that will make your rental management easier.

• The new Lease Generator makes filling out leases by hand a thing of the past.

• Use the Create Statement button to generate a statement (instead of a receipt) for a tenant.

• Create a Payment History Report to present to your tenants who need a month by month accounting with a running balance due.

• Add a daily late charge in addition to a flat late fee.

• Adjust report output before printing with new column width adjusters and an Edit Report button.

• Now you can select a Building to post Expenses to rather than just a Unit.

• Keep track of how much you owe on the mortgage for any unit or building and easily add a Mortgage Payment to Expense Tracker.

• Add an additional name to the lease and any notices.

• Two additional fields in Contact Tracker allow you to add criteria to sort by.

• New Payment Calculator calculates loan payments and future values of investments. You can also compute the total number of months before an amount is paid off.

Version 1.2.2 has a few minor improvements.

In version 1.2.1 there have been many improvements and refinements to the software. Some of these include the ability to mark a tenant as vacated or a unit record as vacant. If the move in date and the rent due dates are not the same (i.e., the tenant moves into a unit in the middle of the month) the first month's rent is prorated and you have the option of adding the next months rent to the first invoice. Another slight change is when tenant records are imported, the old information is updated with the new information, so more than one person can generate rent receipts.

Version 1.2 includes the ability to specify the rental period as weekly, monthly or for several months. Now those of you who have weekly vacation rentals or rent on a semiannual basis can use Rental Tracker Plus too. Users can choose between the different rental periods by clicking the Rent Due On field in Tenant Tracker (see illustration below).

Also if the first rental period is less than the full term (i.e., rent is due on the first, but the Move In date is the tenth) a partial first months rent will be calculated. If the first rental period is less than 20 days then the program will also ask if you want to add a second months rent to the first receipt. This new capability will make calculation of the first rental receipt much easier.

Many changes have been made to the Tenant Tracker component of Rental Tracker Plus. Instead of one name field, there are now First Name and Last Name fields. Tenant names are now listed in the Lastname, Firstname format in the Tenant fields in Unit Tracker and Income Tracker.

Instead of one phone field, there are now Home Phone, Work Phone and Other Phones fields.

To accommodate more information on the Tenant Tracker record, 4 new tab buttons have been added. These allow the display of Dates/Charges, Personal Info, Payments and Notes.

The Dates/Charges tab has a new field called Lease Length where you can enter either the length of the lease or MTM (indicating a month to month rental). There is no longer an Other Charges field (which previously only displayed the total of the Other Recurring Charges) but functionally no changes have been made.

The Personal Info tab button displays the following information about your tenant: SS# or Tax ID #, Auto License #, Other Phones, Primary Employer, Position (or job title), Email Address and any Other Employer.

The Payments tab displays payments (each time the Create Receipt button is clicked in Rental Income Tracker, a new line is inserted in this field indicating the date, amount and the month the rent was for). Two new buttons include Create Payment Record and Rent History Report.

Rental Tracker Plus is now capable of reporting your tenant's payment history to Rent History, Inc. which is a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) created specifically to serve the needs of Residential Rental Property Owners and Managers. They gather the information that landlords need the most and make it available in an easy to read format, all at a reasonable cost. See www.renthistory.com for more information.

The Rent History Report button will generate export files that you can send to RentHistory.com who then will be able to report payment information to subsequent landlords.

The Notes tab displays a field where you can keep any notes about the tenant.

Click the Late Notice button to create a notice (which you can customize for your own particular needs) to send to delinquent renters. Use the Tenant Notice button to generate one or more notices of a more general nature to your tenants. These notices can be personalized and saved for future use.

New report options in Rental Income Tracker include a Start Date and End Date for the report and a Show Sub Totals option which provides totals in the report for each tenant's payments.

Several minor bugs have been fixed.